Quantic Dream really wants you to think of their games as interactive movies, to the point that "Beyond: Two Souls" gives top billing to actors Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe. And, yet, for the first few hours they appeared to be really convincing puppets, at least until I could reconcile what I thought they looked like in real life with their digital counterparts.

But then it's hard to imagine the game without the warmth that Page and Dafoe bring to their voice and motion capture performances. Their presence onscreen, along with the technical acumen that put them there, give "Beyond" a personality that the polite serial killer whodunit "Heavy Rain" was ultimately missing. "Beyond," on the other hand, captures the ambitious tone of a supernatural drama - involving secret labs, the CIA and rifts to other dimensions - with Page as Jodie, the girl with mysterious powers at the center of it all.

Much of the game play remains unchanged, with onscreen prompts popping up whenever you need to guide Jodie to open a door or direct a conversation. At times the visual cues are pared down even further by having you read Jodie's body language to block or parry in combat. You can even play everything via a smartphone app, which tells you where the game's ambitions lie.

The biggest change is the presence of Aiden, a spirit attached to Jodie who's capable of floating between walls, knocking over objects and possessing others. Aiden is both comfort and curse for Jodie, and more than once she has to remind others that she has no control over him - and that's because you do. It's a clever fourth-wall conceit that gives the player agency: You're the one enacting "Carrie"-like revenge on a party gone wrong, even after Jodie implores you to stop.

Why misbehave? Because it's fun to throw around some godlike powers and give the illusion of cheating in some otherwise tightly scripted levels. And yet the big action moments when Jodie cries out, "Aiden, save me!" (usually involving a death-defying leap) are a rewarding reversal in making you the sidekick to the heroine.

This minimalist approach to gameplay doesn't translate to the story itself, which meanders with a fractured out-of-order narrative to keep our interest. For every intense level in a lab experiment gone wrong, there's an unhappy childhood memory of a snowball fight or a run-in with some saintly homeless folk. A nuanced portrait of Jodie's relationship with Aiden emerges, but it's less a story and more a plot that falls into place.

All the same, it's fun to see how it all falls together while you lend Jodie a helping hand from the other side of the screen.